Quarantine Journals - Snow week, energy crisis, holy moly, Part IV

The electricity went on and off several times Wednesday night, but we woke up with power on Thursday and it has been going since. Knock on wood. I knock on it so often now that I half expect someone to answer "WHAT DO YOU WANT?"

We spent yesterday cautiously warming up, still with a fire going in the fireplace thanks to the wood that Kim dropped off.  I ran the space heater in the bathroom where the pipes had froze as a precaution since the temperature was still below freezing.  We keep getting alerts to conserve water; much of Texas is without water entirely and the rest of the region seems to be under boil notices, but nothing here so far.  It is a weird dance between conserving electricity and conserving gas and conserving water and yet still surviving and preventing the pipes from freezing.

News came out that while all this was going on, Ted Cruz took his family to a resort in Cancun.  When he was caught red-handed, he blamed it on his kids wanting a vacation for their days off.  Then he said he was coming back the next day, just trying to be a good dad.  Then texts emerged between his wife and her friends saying that her house was FREEZING and they got a good deal at a resort and were leaving.  They left their dog behind, alone.

So many pictures and videos are coming out of people's homes completely frozen over, destroyed, flooded, you name it.  I am so grateful that we made it through this without any major damage that we are aware of.  

I spent Thursday morning trying to help our elderly neighbor find someone to fix a broken valve that wouldn't shut off, and all the plumbers are SWAMPED with no availability until mid march.

Once the house was warmed up, we took the kids outside to play in the snow some more.  Whereas Oliver was jumping into it face first, laying on it like a pillow, and never wanted to come inside before, he was too grumpy and not having any of it yesterday.  He did help us to build a snowman for a while before he came inside with Richard.  Penny and I stayed outside to explore, leave out some bird food, grapes, and carrots, and have an epic snow ball fight.  We came back inside and layed with our feet in front of the fire to warm up.  Oliver climbed on top of me and we all snuggled by the fire.